Bill C-25 (Historical)

Truth in Sentencing Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (limiting credit for time spent in pre-sentencing custody)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to specify the extent to which a court may take into account time spent in custody by an offender before sentencing.

Truth in Sentencing Act

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, I tried to cover in my remarks that there is a very high duty on the government. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Madam Speaker, and I guess by devolution you know that.

However, the real issue is whether we are going to avoid enacting legislation that is needed because the consequence of it might not be handled by some other department. It reminds me of having an illness in a medicare system that says, “We are not going to send that sick person for the treatment they need because we know the medical system is overcrowded and the hospitals are not doing a good job”.

It does not deny one's duty to treat the disease, or in this case to bring in the legislation that is needed.

I may have a different view than the hon. member about this legislation. I think judges are looking for clarity and that they are making decisions based on aspects of human rights as it may pertain to jail conditions. They should be putting those decisions in writing, and then we would have a body of decisions. I know they are only scripted decisions, such as a written endorsement on the back of a motion record cover. My friend is a lawyer and he knows what I am talking about. But it is a reason. Today we do not have that; it is in a dark hole. We do not know why judges per se are giving credit for remand custody.

If it is because of appalling conditions, then that provides a paper trail to the solicitors general in the various provinces to do something about those conditions. Thus far, with all due respect, we have only heard about conditions from inmates' rights groups, prisoners themselves perhaps, and from defence attorneys. We need a body of evidence from our judges. In my view, this would engage them to keep an accurate account of why they are giving remand based on conditions in the prisons.

However, I agree 100% with the member that the duty is on the government to step up and make sure that it resources the facilities it is in charge of.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, I take issue with my friend on that last point. We do not know only from prisoner advocates or the defence bar, we know from Correctional Services. I know my friend wants to leave, but I have to pin him down. We know from Mr. Head and Mr. Sapers, who is very directly involved, that we have overcrowding. Mr. Head told us at committee that we had a huge number of cells designed for one inmate, in which two and, more and more often, three inmates were in them.

We also know that the justice minister came before our committee. When I asked him a question about the capacity in our prison systems to handle the additional inmates, he said that he had talked to the public safety minister and gave the assurances that we had the capacity to take additional prisoners. That was before Mr. Head, the real person who knows what is going on, because the Minister of Public Safety does not, came before us and said that we did not have the capacity. As much as he tried to be diplomatic about not contradicting his minister, he said that we were overcrowded already, that we had large numbers of cells holding two inmates, which are only designed for one, and that we had a large number of cells in which there were three inmates, and that was getting worse.

I come back to my friend from Moncton. If we have that kind of ignorance level on the part of the government, on the part of the minister responsible for corrections, what hope do we have if we pass the bill and we have that increase in population? I am not talking programming. I am talking about physical space to handle these prisoners. What assurances do we have, what sense of hope do we have that the government is going to do anything about increasing the number of prisons in the country?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, I hope my friend was not implying I was trying to run away from a debate with him. I would never do that. I am happy to say that Don Head, the CSC official, and I have it in writing and I wrote notes at the time, assured us that Correctional Service was committed to continuing to fulfill its mandate. We also have on record, some time ago, $220 million from the government for further corrections facilities.

I share my hon. colleague's concern. However, I also throw back to him that we have a duty to make laws that are clear and fair. There are consequences of those laws. In this case, and I have highlighted it maybe four times now, the consequences of some of this legislation, and particularly this bill, may be that there is pressure on CSC and other provincial facilities. It is incumbent upon the government to ensure that it prepares for it. Having this debate, bringing that to the attention of people at committee is very much what we do as parliamentarians.

I, too, was somewhat disillusioned by the answer of the Minister of Justice in saying that he had consulted with the Minister of Public Safety. It begs perhaps a question of our own due diligence. I would submit for the member for Windsor—Tecumseh that maybe we should have had the Minister of Public Safety there. It seems many times at justice committee, we have issues that we really would like to ask of the Minister of Public Safety, for these very reasons, that we do not get a crack at because we have the Minister of Justice telling us that he has talked to him and that everything seems to be okay.

I am not getting that assurance from the answer. However, as I say, the government has the fiduciary duty. If there is harm done in this situation, it is clearly on the heads of the government members. We cannot avoid our duty in enacting, approving and supporting laws that we think make it clearer and make the judge's job easier to administer the law and more useful to us by those endorsements that will report on conditions in our prisons across the country.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, we have been talking about Bill C-25 for some time already, and I just want to point out that the Bloc Québécois was, once again, miles ahead of the government on this issue.

For several years now, we have been urging the government to eliminate the remand custody credit. I was looking for the right term. I also had “one-sixth of the sentence” in mind because the Bloc Québécois introduced a bill a few years ago that would have eliminated the one-sixth practice for offenders. The reason it took me a minute is that the Bloc Québécois introduces a lot of bills about justice in an effort to ensure fairness.

We have two very good colleagues, the member for Hochelaga and the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, both of whom are experts in matters of justice. Our colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin was once Quebec's public safety minister. Now you understand why it took me a minute to remember. The Bloc Québécois has introduced so many excellent bills on justice that it is easy to get them mixed up.

The Conservatives do not give us many reasons to celebrate when it comes to justice, but Bill C-25 is one, at least. The Bloc Québécois has strongly supported the measure in the bill since 2007. The Bloc Québécois has been talking about this for over two years now, which is a long time. On June 15, 2007, the Bloc Québécois proposed a series of recommendations about important changes to the Canadian justice system. These measures called for a more balanced justice system that is adapted to new realities, has a real impact on crime, and most importantly, avoids following the American model based on repression, a model whose negative outcomes are all too visible.

We are seeing this a lot particularly with this dogmatic, Conservative government, which is trying, through every possible means, especially with minimum sentences, to copy the American model, which simply does not work.

Earlier my colleague said that Canadian prisons were full to capacity. I invite him to go the United States to see what it is like there. He will soon realize that, compared to them, we should not feel so bad. American prisons are packed and the crime rate there is extremely high. There are many other reasons, apart from how the justice system itself operates. The gun registry comes to mind, something the Americans do not have. The free flow of firearms is also a serious problem in the United States, which means that a lot more crimes are committed with firearms there.

Earlier I mentioned some of the remarkable qualities of my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. He recently explained to all the members of the Bloc Québécois that Canada has, if I am not mistaken, about 100 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, while the United States has about 736 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. As we can see, copying the American model would be a serious mistake.

I must say, Quebeckers worry when we see the Conservative government acting in this way, whether we are talking about minimum sentences, the gun registry or its overall, general views on crime.

The Conservatives say they are tough on crime and they say so in an aggressive way. They are trying to show that they know what they are talking about. Yet police associations across Canada are criticizing this government. They are saying that, apart from a few photo ops with police officers, there has been no real, concrete action. There is still a serious shortage of police officers. The Conservative government boasts about hiring them and making huge investments, but apart from some nice announcements and empty promises, we have seen absolutely nothing.

Let us look at how Quebec manages public safety and justice.

Our approach is much more comprehensive and focuses more on integration and prevention. Quebec's approach is to ensure that the criminal does not commit crimes rather than arresting criminals once they have committed crimes, as the Conservative government would have it. That is the objective of Quebec and especially our colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.

Quebec, represented by the Bloc Québécois, has a very good understanding of justice issues and does a good job of defending them. The proof is that in Quebec only about 40 crimes involving firearms are committed each year, which is an extremely small number. We have a very low crime rate. There is little crime in Quebec. I am extremely proud of that and, above all, it is the result of the way we manage public safety and justice.

The Bloc Québécois has presented measures that reflect the values of Quebeckers. These measures are primarily based on prevention, rehabilitation, social and economic integration, and a better distribution of wealth.

As I was saying, unfortunately, all too often, people who are going to commit crimes are poor. A study was published—whether or not we agree with it—which stated that during a recession, the crime rate increases because people have a great deal less money. We can readily deduce that there may be a correlation between poverty and the crime rate. The poorer people are, the greater their needs and, unfortunately, the more they will commit crimes, not because of need—because one never needs to commit a crime—but because it may be their only way out.

Therefore, we have to do more than just put people in jail. We have to help them with education, job searches and job creation. We have to try to take these people and put them back into the labour force by giving them a hand up and thus ensuring that we lower the crime rate.

Our proposals included streamlining the parole system, stepping up the fight against organized crime and providing better funding for the national crime prevention strategy.

Simply put, when a person is arrested for committing an offence under the Criminal Code, he must be brought before a judge as quickly as possible. At this stage, the crown attorney must inform the defendant of the charges against him. While the defendant is awaiting trial, the judge has two options: he can release the defendant, with or without conditions, if he feels that the defendant is not at risk of reoffending, or the judge may order that the defendant be detained until sentencing, if the defendant is dangerous.

If the judge chooses to detain the defendant, the period leading up to sentencing is called time served in remand or time in custody. After the trial, the judge must give an appropriate punishment to the guilty party. That is the sentence. The Criminal Code and related jurisprudence set out some criteria to guide the court.

I digress, but earlier I spoke a little about minimum sentences. These minimum sentences dismiss the criteria in the jurisprudence, and remove the judges' ability to think freely and use discretion in giving a fair sentence to any criminal.

As it stands, to determine the punishment for someone found guilty of a crime, the court must take into account all the time the individual spent in custody since the crime was committed. Although it is left to their discretion, judges not only generally take into account time in custody, but also apply the two-for-one rule. This means that time in custody counts two-for-one, and in some cases, judges have even gone as far as counting it as three-for-one.

This calculation method stems from the fact that few if any programs or activities are available to inmates during the trial period. Moreover, their detention conditions are poor and correctional facilities are overcrowded. Since the bill was introduced, we have discussed at length the serious shortcomings in overpopulated penitentiaries.

We do not want to leave this out of this debate, because it is an extremely important issue. However, we are first and foremost legislators, and we have to make the law that makes up the Criminal Code. We must also develop and introduce laws and then pressure the government for the necessary financial and human resources. We must ensure that this bill is fully enforced.

This calculation method stems from the fact that penitentiaries are overcrowded. In addition, time spent in pre-sentencing custody is not taken into account in calculating eligibility for full parole or statutory release. For all these reasons, judges tend to give two-for-one credit for time spent in pre-sentencing custody.

On March 27, 2009, the Minister of Justice introduced Bill C-25 for first reading in the House of Commons. The bill has to do with sentencing. The principles of sentencing are found mainly in part XXIII of the Criminal Code, in section 718 and the sections that follow.

The bill is intended to eliminate any possibility that a judge will give two-for-one credit for time spent in pre-sentencing custody. Clause 3 of the bill sets out this principle by limiting the credit for that time to a maximum of one day for each day spent in custody. As well, and only if the circumstances justify it, the bill allows a credit of one and one-half days for each day spent in custody, unless the person was kept in custody because of his criminal record or a breach of probation. In that case, no greater credit may be granted, regardless of the conditions in which the offender was held during his trial.

With respect to that measure, the Bloc Québécois recognizes that in some specific and very exceptional situations, it may be appropriate to subtract time served before and during the trial at a rate of a day and a half for each day in custody from the sentence. If that results in a reduction equivalent to 50% of the days spent in remand, in some cases, that would not discredit the justice system. There are cases involving conditions of detention ill suited to the person's health. In all cases, when a judge reduces the sentence in consideration of time served in pre-sentencing custody, the judge must justify that decision, record the reasons for it in the file and detail how the guilty person's sentence was calculated.

For more than two years now, the Bloc Québécois has recommended that this rule be eliminated, so we are pleased with this measure because the reason for this practice no longer reflects the reality of today's prison system. Along with the fact that legal cases are getting longer and more complex, this practice supports the popular notion that sentences are too lenient, discredits the administration of justice and frustrates victims and their families, who sometimes see the offenders turned loose shortly after sentencing.

People often get the sense that we are too soft on some criminals. I understand some of the victims. I also understand how the parents, friends and colleagues of victims who have been brutally murdered feel when the criminal goes free. The murderer may be sentenced to 10 or 15 years in jail, but gets out after serving barely 4 or 5 years.

The loved ones of victims might feel the justice system is faulty, since criminals are released much more quickly. Of course, that is all because of the two-for-one time. Here is an example. Now, if an accused spends six months in pre-sentencing custody and is sentenced to two years in prison, his sentence will likely last only one year. This bill would fix that anomaly.

When it comes to justice, the Bloc Québécois firmly believes that the most effective approach is always prevention. We have to attack crime at its roots. As I said at the beginning of my speech, justice is not simply about sentencing. It is not enough to be tough on crime, as the Conservatives like to say. That creates problems, because they have blinders on that prevent them from seeing the rest of the problem and the seriousness of the situation.

There are factors that push an individual to become a criminal. I do not believe that a person is not born fundamentally bad, but that they become bad, unfortunately, because of misfortunes, problems or bad luck. We must try to prevent crime. We must do a lot of prevention and education. We must find and target the factors that push these people to commit crimes, and try to eliminate as many as possible.

That being said, the Bloc is aware that the existing legal system needs considerable improvement, and that some changes to the Criminal Code are necessary. The government's duty is to intervene and use the tools at its disposal to make sure that Quebeckers and Canadians can live peacefully and safely. On June 15, 2007, in response to the Conservatives' ideological approach, the Bloc Québécois recommended a number of measures.

This constructive approach is already making a difference. In budget 2008, the Conservative government implemented some of the ideas put forward by the Bloc Québécois. It provided additional funding to the national crime prevention strategy and to crown prosecutors.

Since coming to power, the Conservatives have taken a rigid, ideological approach to justice. Although some of the measures introduced have had some positive elements, others have clearly gone too far and have been ineffective, or even counterproductive. That was true of Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which focused more on imprisonment than on Quebec's very pertinent success with reintegration and rehabilitation.

During the 2008 election campaign, the Conservatives said they wanted to throw young people aged 14 to 16 in jail. Personally, after having met with many young people, I find it really sad to see the Conservatives adopting such a rigid, dogmatic approach whereby they want to send our young people to prison.

As I said earlier, we should instead focus our efforts on rehabilitation. We must help these young people understand what led them to crime. We must give them a hand up, instead of foolishly sending them to prison, where they can attend crime school. If these young people come into contact with people serving 20 or 25 year sentences, they will learn the tricks of the trade.

The Bloc Québécois does not understand that. I think all of Quebec had a hard time understanding that during the last election campaign. Quebeckers clearly demonstrated this by sending 49 Bloc Québécois members, rather than Conservatives, to the House of Commons.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague from Repentigny. I am truly surprised by his keen awareness, in spite of his young age or because of it, of the various problems that could arise for young people from certain measures that the government wants to put in place. I find it very refreshing to find him so knowledgeable about these measures and their repercussions, especially given that he has barely left adolescence behind him and that he probably has some youthful pranks in his past, as we all do.

Therefore, it seems that he is very knowledgeable about this matter and that he has spoken to a number of young people to ascertain that jail is not necessarily a good means of rehabilitation.

I would like my young colleague to explain to me how a party in power can refuse to comply with rulings made by courts, tribunals and judges. How can a government that refuses to accept and comply with these rulings presume to decide for its population that what is not good for some of them will be good for criminals or individuals who make youthful mistakes? How can that be? Why is there a double standard?

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Laval and tell her that I was a very well-behaved adolescent.

I must say that I find the government's approach very dangerous, when it says that it will be tough on crime, it will enforce the laws and it will impose penalties. The government is trying to play the matador, beating its chest to try to show criminals that it is strong and tough, even though it does not even comply with Federal Court decisions. I find that extremely problematic.

This Conservative government is clearly inconsistent. It has proven this on many occasions, and we have seen it in the House during many question periods. We still do not have an answer. The government is still saying that it will read the documents and give an answer later. It is always putting things off.

We have seen this in the Abdelrazik case, which was before the Federal Court. The court ruled against the federal government. And even though he has had two days to read 100 pages, all the Minister of Justice will say is that he will read the file and eventually give an answer. Meanwhile, Canadians are being left to perish in horrible conditions abroad. This is totally unacceptable. As I told my colleague from Laval earlier, many people in my riding are outraged by that.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have a comment that is not too harsh. It is a small criticism directed at the Bloc and its support for this bill.

The information obtained by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights indicates that there is not enough room for inmates in provincial and federal prisons. As far as I know, the Bloc likes to portray itself in this House as the protector of the interests of Quebec and its citizens. Having said that, we know that in Quebec, as in all the other provinces, the jails are full and there is no money to expand them.

I ask my Bloc colleague, is it not irresponsible to support this bill, because it will increase the number of inmates in the province of Quebec and in all the other provincial and federal prisons?

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I understand my NDP colleague's concerns, but as I said earlier, our job is to legislate. This is an excellent bill, and I am a little disappointed that the NDP is against it because it could really help keep prisoners in jail and ensure better outcomes for victims' family and friends.

Of course, now we will have to deal with another problem: lack of funding to build and expand prisons. Take Laval, for example. One of my colleagues presented a petition concerning a former penitentiary that had been closed. The Conservatives say that they are trying to keep crime in check. As I have said, they claim they are trying to get tough, but unfortunately, they are not putting up enough cash to make it happen.

Another problem is that there is a shortage of resources not just for prisons, but also for police forces.

We have to take a much more comprehensive look at the issue. For once, the government has given us a good bill. We have to take advantage of this opportunity and support it because this is something we have been asking for for years. Now it is clear that we will have another job to do. I encourage my NDP colleagues, along with my Liberal colleagues, to get involved in a new campaign to fund prisons.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, there is a small population of individuals in Canada who commit crimes and are inveterate criminals. One of the great challenges we have, and one of the things that makes the public angry and our police officers dispirited, is that these inveterate criminals appear to be thumbing their noses at the justice system because they receive small penalties and are able to revolve quickly through it.

That small group of people has to be separated from the majority of individuals, who often have other problems such as dual diagnosis, fetal alcohol syndrome, fetal alcohol effects, psychiatric problems and substance abuse issues. That population of people who are basically committing misdemeanours has to be removed.

However, I want to ask my colleague what he thinks we should do for that small population of individuals who have essentially made a conscious decision, without any mitigating factors, that they are going to commit crimes against Canadian citizens. What things can we do, as all of us believe must be done, to strengthen the rights of victims in Canada?

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.

I recently attended a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security with our colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. He told me that close to 39% of people in prison have problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome and mental illness. A comprehensive approach is therefore needed. Eliminating two-for-one crediting of time would be one way to make sure that these people remain in prison. If they are sentenced to 25 years, then they should serve 25 years. If they are sentenced to 15 years, then they should serve 15 years.

Of course, we also need to work on the reasons these criminals commit these crimes, reasons such as poverty and mental illness. There should also be a major initiative to address these issues.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are confronted with an interesting phenomenon in this piece of legislation. It seems fairly straightforward. It is a very small piece of legislation. There are really only two sections to it when we actually analyze it.

What it does is bring to the fore a debate and an analysis that we as parliamentarians should be involving ourselves in to a much greater degree than we have up to this point.

The reason we have not done so up to this point with the government--and I would have to be critical of the prior Liberal administrations over the last decade or so--is that we are confronted with this reality: we have declining crime, but increasing populations in our prisons, both at the provincial level and at the federal level.

Another phenomenon that I think very few members of this Parliament understand is the shift that has occurred over roughly the last 10 years in the number of people incarcerated in pretrial detention centres, as opposed to those who are incarcerated after sentencing, whether at the provincial level or at the federal level.

The ratio of the pretrial, pre-sentencing, custodial population and the post-sentencing population has reversed itself. It used to be roughly two to one; that is, one-third of the population in incarceration in this country at any given time would be in pretrial custody, and two-thirds would have been incarcerated post-sentencing and would be in our federal prisons. I want to be clear that I am only talking about the adult population.

We have a provision within the Criminal Code that allows our judges, as a sentencing guideline, to take into account the pretrial custody period of time, and the conditions, in sentencing after conviction.

Over a period of time, as the number of individuals in pretrial custody shifted to such larger percentages and a corresponding deterioration occurred in the conditions in those detention centres, a practice grew up in our courts--and this is true at provincial court levels across the country, in the territories and at the federal superior court level--for the judges to begin universally granting credit for that pretrial custody in excess of a one-to-one ratio.

In fact, by the time this bill came before this House, it was fairly common for credit to be given--on average, for all sentences--at close to a two-to-one ratio. Actually, as we heard in the committee, it is somewhat less than two, but it is right around there.

Then in some extraordinary cases over the last two or three years, we also had the phenomenon developing across the country of credit being given at a three-to-one ratio. The reason for that was not only the basic humanity of our judges, but also our international obligations: as a nation, we have signed on to protocols to treat our prisoners in a humane fashion in both pretrial settings and post-sentencing settings.

One of the specific provisions in those international protocols is that prisoners serve their time in cells that are designed for one person and that have only one person in them. What has occurred in both the pretrial custody setting and more and more in the post-sentencing setting is that we are finding people in ratios greater than one to one in the cells. As often as not, it is three to one, and in some cases it is four to one.

I am going to concentrate my remarks on some of these detention centres, because this evidence was before our courts on a regular basis. Some of them are very old, there is no programming in terms of any education and sanitary conditions generally are poor. We can go down the list.

As the judiciary across the country heard evidence on this in individual cases, the practice of granting two-to-one credits became very common. It was almost universal. It was not mandated by any statute, whether our corrections statutes or the Criminal Code. It is certainly not in any sentencing guidelines in the code. It was simply because judges, on an individual basis, knew how bad the conditions were in the detention centres where they were placing people.

That was all about the judiciary trying to send a message to the political level of government, the administrative level of government, that they had to do something about this. We have signed on to these international protocols and have the responsibility to treat prisoners humanely, and we are not doing it. That is really the message that was going out.

The message that was received was that judges were just going off on their own and playing around with this. I have heard sometimes offensive comments from legislators at both the provincial and the federal levels attacking our judiciary, believing that somehow they were granting two-to-one and three-to-one credits just on whims.

That is not the reality. We have an excellent judiciary. I have said this in the House before and I am going to repeat it again. If we do not have the best judiciary in the world, there are none that are better. That is true whether we are at the provincial court level or at the federal level of judicial appointments.

They do not do this on a whim. For the better part of a decade they have been wanting to send the message to the legislators that we are not getting it, because we are not deploying necessary resources. Not only are we not deploying the necessary resources to clean up the pretrial detention centres, but at this federal level of government, in this chamber--and this has been true of not just the Conservatives, although they may be going a little faster than the Liberals--we are consistently going quite rapidly toward increasing the number of charges that would result in jail times. We are also increasing the length of time that people are spending in jail.

The result is that we have this backlog in our courts, as more and more defendants are not pleading guilty. We have rules that are developing that require greater disclosure. That again is justifiable in terms of a fair trial, but it is taking longer for cases to get through, so we have this growing population, now at almost a two-to-one ratio, in pretrial custody in conditions that by international standards are not humane. Our judges want the legislators at both the provincial and federal levels to do something about that.

Instead of doing something about it--instead of deploying added resources or perhaps using other mechanisms, such as community programming, to divert prisoners from lengthier sentences--what we do is respond with this piece of legislation, in effect saying to the courts that we do not trust their judgment on how to handle pretrial credits.

This bill really is quite disrespectful to judges in that regard. It says that we are going to impose mandatory requirements. If this bill goes through--as it almost certainly is going to, because the other three parties are clearly going to support it--we are going to mandate only one-to-one credit as the standard. The effect of that is to lengthen the time people will spend in post-trial custody.

In circumstances that are justifiable, the bill will allow judges to go to 1.5-to-one credit, even though, as I said earlier, the standard across the country is now closer to two to one on average.

I was very clear in committee to try to get this information. There are no additional resources being planned to assist the provinces because all the pretrial detention centres, with very few exceptions in the territories, are operated by the provinces. There is absolutely no plan on the part of the government to provide the provinces with additional resources for better quality settings for pretrial detention centres. The conditions will remain as they are and get worse at the pretrial level.

We heard from lawyers who appeared in committee that we inevitably would be faced with a charter challenge. We are not in keeping with the international standard on to which we have signed. We already know what the standard is. It is not like we can argue we are close to it. We are not and we know that. The standard is a very clear one at the international level. That is offensive to the section 12 of the charter, which requires us not to provide for cruel and unusual punishment, and it amounts to that.

If we proceed with this, all we will do is provide the scenario or circumstances for a while. I think the courts will do what they can to provide the 1.5 credit because the circumstances will be bad enough to do that. Inevitably, there will be a charter challenge and I have believe that challenge will be successful.

If a charter challenge is successful, there has to be a result to that. There has to be a diminution on the part of the court to compensate for the charter breach. We then are going to find and more and more judges making a finding of a charter breach and releasing more and more prisoners from custody. I do not find any appreciation on the part of the Minister of Justice of this.

Judges will provide bail when they would not have otherwise or they will release them, maybe even dismiss the charges because of the breach of the charter, specifically section 12, cruel and unusual punishment. That is coming down the road. All this bill does is hasten it coming.

I want to be quite clear about this. Even if we do not pass the bill, that will probably happen, unless the federal government provides additional resources to divert or build more prisons. Again, there is no indication that it will do that.

I want to talk about another consequence of the legislation. Maybe one has to have practised law for a while to appreciate the reality of this. If this goes through as proposed and the courts can grant, in justifiable circumstances, an extension from the 1 to 1 credit to the 1.5 to 1 credit, much more evidence will have to be presented to the court. Even if there is a guilty plea, instead of sentencing taking on average—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I regret having to interrupt the hon. member. He will have approximately six minutes remaining for his comments when the debate on the bill resumes next week.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (limiting credit for time spent in pre-sentencing custody). The Liberal Party believes this is very important legislation in fighting crime and we are therefore supporting the bill.

We listened to attorneys general. The driving force for the legislation came from the west, in large part from my province of British Columbia. My colleagues and I met with the attorney general of British Columbia at the time, who articulated very clearly the need for truth in sentencing and an effort to limit pretrial pre-sentencing custody time and give greater clarity.

Right now this is known as dead time and the numbers can be quite flexible and are up to a judge. It can be anything from one to one or one to three, commonly known as one to two. However, this did not reflect, in many ways, the wishes and desires of the public and the ability of our police officers and police forces to execute their duty to the citizens of our country to protect us from those who would do harm to us.

I will quote from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police on this issue as follows:

Public confidence in the criminal justice system demands that criminals receive just and proportionate sentences fitting their crime...this Bill, if passed, will bring greater clarity, transparency and accountability to the sentencing process...

We fully support this. In fact, the key messages I want to get across on behalf of my party is that we want to ensure our police officers and those who are tasked to execute justice in our country have the appropriate tools with which to catch, convict and sentence criminals. We also want to ensure the bill strikes a reasonable balance between ensuring that criminals serve complete sentences, while also maintaining a degree of judicial discretion to deal with instances where there are conditions that deem changes.

We support the fact that clarity and definition will be brought to the amount of pre-custody sentencing provisions, specifically the credit time spent in pre-sentencing custody will be limited and delineated by the bill. Our rationale for this is we have had consultations with our caucus members and with the attorney general and solicitor general of British Columbia. They explained the instances in which convicted criminals received abbreviated sentences, which eroded the public confidence in the judicial system, especially when convicted gang members were released sooner than their sentences warrant.

In my province of British Columbia gang violence has caused a significant erosion in the faith of the public in the ability of the justice system to protect us. The criminal gang violence that has occurred, particularly in and around the Lower Mainland, has claimed dozens of lives. This is unusual, but the fact that this has not been arrested speaks to the need for Parliament, working with our provincial counterparts, to deal with this cancer. Organized crime is a cancer in our society. I will talk a bit about that later because it has caused incredible frustration among our citizens and our police officers, who try day in and day out to deal with this challenge.

I want to talk about a certain aspect of the bill that deals with what happens when people are convicted and they go into a remand centre before they go to trial. Historically the time before sentencing, if they are convicted, is deemed to be given one for one, two for one or even three for one value for the time that has been spent in the pre-conviction period of time, the time in custody.

We have found that the conditions are quite poor in the remand centres, those that are provincial two years less a day. We have to work with our provincial counterparts to deal with this issue. Most people who commit crimes and are convicted do not go to federal institutions of two years or more. They go into provincial institutions of two years less a day. This is often known as dead time, and the underlying problems of many of the people in these institutions, because of overcrowding or a lack of resources, are not dealt with. What are those problems?

I recently met with people at Correctional Service Canada. I asked about the conditions in the provincial jails and the population of individuals that came to their attention. In fact, when I was in university, I used to work in a provincial jail. The situation in many cases has not changed in terms of the population. Nowadays more than 50% of the people in jail are deemed to have fetal alcohol syndrome/fetal alcohol effects.

For those who do not know this, FAS/FAE is the leading cause of preventable brain damage in children at birth. The consumption of alcohol in certain quantities, particularly in the first trimester, causes irreparable brain damage. The average IQ is 70 to 75. Once people who have FAS/FAE start growing up, people do not understand them. They do not understand their behaviour, which is out of the realm of what is considered “normal”. When they go to school, they cannot concentrate, study or learn. The teachers do not know how to handle them. They fall through the cracks.

The tragedy of this is it is entirely preventable. I have been here almost 16 years and there has not been any reasonable, effective legislative solution. I put forward a bill some years ago, which took the line of what we would do when people had a psychiatric problem. When people have psychiatric problems and are psychotic, they come to the emergency department. The emergency room physician can write a note, with another physician, that will put them in hospital, against their wishes, if they are deemed to be a danger to themselves or to other people or cannot take care of themselves. As emergency physicians, we do this when circumstances warrant. There are very narrow definitions for this, but the outcome of it is it prevents people from hurting themselves or somebody else and it enables them to get the care they require.

If a woman is keeping the fetus to term, then one could apply the same rationale. In doing so, we could prevent FAS/FAE from occurring. In fact, there was a case in Winnipeg where a women had a couple of babies with brain damage because of the consumption of alcohol. However, her third baby, because she was put in hospital to receive care, did not have FAS/FAE or brain damage. She admitted that the only reason her third child did not have FAS/FAE was because she was brought to the hospital, albeit against her will, for a short period of time, which enabled her to get her life back in order.

I know it is a hard and difficult thing, but it at least warrants debate in the House.

The other thing is two-thirds of the people in jail have what we call a dual diagnosis. They have a psychiatric problem and they have a substance abuse problem. In speaking to police officers and those who work in our corrections system, one of the big gaps is the fact that most people who are convicted by the courts go into a provincial institution, where the kinds of treatment they need for their psychiatric problems, substance abuse issues and skills training simply are not there.

Therefore, we have a revolving door of tossing people out of the institutions. The recidivism rate is high. They commit more serious crimes and eventually wind up in federal institutions, where they have a much greater chance of receiving the type of treatment they require and preventing them from committing the same types of punitive acts against our citizens.

The current situation does not serve the public's right to be protected. It does not serve the ability of our police officers to protect us. It does not serve the ability of an individual who has committed a crime to receive the types of rehabilitation required in order not to recommit often more serious crimes when he or she gets out.

In this way, the current system does not work. I can only impress upon the federal government to work with its provincial counterparts, who have their hands out and are asking for help in dealing with this issue for the sake of the citizens of our country.

The other issue I would like to address is the issue of victim rehabilitation. It is something that we in the Liberal Party have been very supportive of. We want to work with the provinces to make sure that our victims receive the care, support, treatment and rehabilitation that they require when they have been victimized.

In my personal view, they also need to be able to have a greater sense of knowledge of what happens when the person who has victimized them leaves jail. This is particularly important for those who have been subjected to violent crime, assaults and sexual violence. It is also important for the families of those who have been subjected to these very serious offences.

I had a case in my riding where a lady was murdered by an individual. The family members had very little knowledge of the location of this person who had committed the crime, when the person was being released and where the person was being released. It so happens that they found out that the person was going to be released in their community. In fact, this scared them and understandably so.

One of our objectives has to be the protection of innocent civilians, those who have been victimized and the family members of those who have been victimized. They must also be brought into this and treated with respect, and given the care that they deserve. That has to be top of mind in the justice system when we are dealing with these issues.

I also want to talk for a second about some of the other specific areas that police officers have been asking for. I am going to enumerate some of them in a list as solutions that the Conservative government should be embracing.

The first is in the area of disclosure. The current requirements for disclosure provide unrealistic demands upon the police and result in tensions between police and the Crown. There are inconsistent practices over who bears the cost of disclosure, how disclosure is prepared, and how documents are vetted. We also see a great benefit in the clarification, consistency and codification of disclosure standards. Specific recommendations are needed to address many elements of disclosure. Greater clarity is needed in this area.

The second area involves witness protection. Police officers have been proposing the formation of an independent office for witness protection, funded jointly at the federal, provincial and territorial levels. This would recognize the shared responsibility for justice. It would make the program accessible to all Canadian police agencies.

The third area deals with the matter of prolific offenders. Many of us feel the need for a legislative definition of chronic offender status. Penalties that emphasize that incarceration is a means of reducing the possibility of victimization are absolutely and fundamentally important. We also recognize that the number of people who go out and commit offence after offence is very small. It is a huge source of difficulty and an enormous source of uncertainty on the part of the public. It also causes an erosion of the confidence that our police officers have in the justice system. The courts have to deal with repeat offenders in a more effective way.

It is unthinkable for most of our citizens, and to us, to comprehend how people who commit offence after offence either do not have their underlying problem dealt with or are of sound mind and have made a conscious decision to keep on offending and violating their responsibility and duty to the general public to be law-abiding citizens. Individuals who are mentally competent are the individuals who should have a much stiffer series of penalties applied to them in the interest of public safety.

Fourth, there is a capacity deficit that needs to be addressed. A deficit exists throughout the criminal justice system, particularly with respect to the police capacity issue caused by an increasing complexity in criminal law. The complexities have been recognized in the context of the court process, but largely overlooked in the policing context.

What the RCMP does today versus what it did 20 years ago is very different. A much larger amount of work is being placed on the shoulders of RCMP officers. The whole post-911 terrorism challenge has been placed primarily on the shoulders of our RCMP officers, but unfortunately, the resources have not come with those added responsibilities. This is a grave issue.

Not only is there a lack of resources in terms of money but there is also a lack of resources in terms of manpower. The RCMP and other police forces in Canada have to pick and choose what they are able to do because there are only so many of them and so many hours in a day. They have to make some very conscious decisions as to what they can actually pursue and cases fall by the wayside as a result, and are not prosecuted in our courts. As a result, the public loses. Justice is not seen to be done because justice is not being done. The federal government needs to deal with this as well.

When we were in power, we authorized an increase in the number of RCMP officers. The government promised to do that also, but has not backed it up with the resources needed to accomplish this goal. It was, unfortunately, a serious broken promise on the part of the government.

Disclosure issues need to be addressed, as I mentioned before, on the part of the RCMP and other police forces in Canada. Our courts are entangled, and justice is sometimes dragged out for a long period of time. As a result, justice is not happening.

If we want to get down to the root of the issue and talk about true prevention, then one of the most extraordinary things we could do, and I have mentioned this dozens of times in the House, is set up an early headstart program for kids.

In the last year there has been a lot of interesting and dynamic scientific research done with respect to the evolution of the brain, particularly early in a child's life. If a fetus is subjected to alcohol and other toxic substances during the first trimester, then the brain could be damaged and the child could suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effects.

A child really only needs one solid person in his or her life, and that individual does not even have to be the parent of that child. The security provided to the child through that bonding can have a profound positive outcome for the child.

A friend of mine in Toronto, Tamba Dhar, started a group called Sage Youth. She works with immigrant children who speak neither French nor English and whose parents are often refugees. These children were falling through the cracks. She established a mentorship program and by doing so, these children face an incredibly positive outcome.

The easiest thing for the government to do if it wants to address the issue of crime prevention is to work with the provinces to implement an early learning headstart program. My colleague put together such an arrangement with the provinces when we were in government, but unfortunately the Conservative government tore up that agreement.

I did not get into the issue of what is happening in aboriginal communities. A disproportionate number of aboriginal people are in jail. This issue has to be deal with. This issue goes to the heart of some fairly fundamental issues such as exclusion, a lack of rights, a lack of caring, and a discriminatory Indian Act that in my view should be torn up and thrown away because it separates first nations people from everybody else in a negative way.

I hope the government works with us and pursues the bill. The Liberal Party supports Bill C-25 in the interest of justice for all.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-25 specifically eliminates, for most purposes, the ability of the courts to actually give two for one and even three for one credit for time spent in custody before trial and sentencing. I noticed that my colleague spent most of his time talking about issues other than Bill C-25.

One of the issues my colleague raised was a lack of resources at the provincial level in terms of providing services to inmates as well as the space required to house inmates at the provincial level. We are talking about sentences of less than two years at the provincial level.

Would the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca agree with me that it was the provinces, specifically the province of British Columbia and its attorney general and solicitor general, who actually requested that we move forward with this important legislation?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is absolutely right. In the first part of my speech, I mentioned that the Government of British Columbia had taken the leadership role in Canada on this issue.

We met, as I know my hon. friend did, with our provincial counterparts in British Columbia. They made their case very clearly, and that is why we in the Liberal Party support Bill C-25. We listened to our provincial counterparts in British Columbia. We are strongly supportive of this bill. I think we have made that very clear to the government.

However, we would also like to make sure that other issues are dealt with, too, in a wide variety of areas, including gang violence and cross-border organized crime issues, ensuring that our provincial police forces, and particularly the RCMP, have the resources to do the jobs they need to do. I spoke a little bit about that in the course of this bill.

I hope that government members work with us to enable this to happen.